30,000 sea birds found dead on the beaches plus at least the same number of birds oil soaked and facing death. A number of dead dolphins are now found dead on the beaches as well. This might have been the biggest ecological catastrophe facing Russia since the Chernobyl catastrophe states one newspaper:
Los Angeles Times: ‘Russian workers point to oil as the problem’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
At least 4 ships and one oil tanker sank this weekend in the Black Sea pouring out at least 2100 tons of fuel oil as well as sulphur.
Due to the storm the clean up of oil goes very slowly and no cleaning of oil soaked bird has occured.
The oil spill has ended up in important bird protection areas and at least 50 000 migratory birds , many of them endangered species are resting in the oil spill area.
Excerpt from yesterdays Los Angeles Times:
” The oil poisoned tens of thousands of birds and blackened miles of coast. People along the shore described a scene of stumbling, blinded seabirds, their feathers too matted to fly, and of a white sand beach covered with oil. Cleanup is expected to take weeks.
“You can see many birds sitting on the beach and slowly dying,” said Igor Golubenkov, a council member in the coastal town of Taman. “They don’t understand what happened to them. They try to move their wings and they no longer can. They just sit there and look at us in agony and die.”
Gruesome pictures of oil soaked birds ( not for the weak hearted):
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russpill14nov14,0,4621221.story?coll=la-tot-world&track=ntothtml
It would be an extremely painful and slow way for these birds to die. Please keep us updated on any clean up news. Of course we mustn’t forget the sailors who died in this too.
A friend of mine who has been an intern at International Bird Rescue and Research Center in California said that this organisation which co works with IFAW has just together with IFAW sent an international Oil Response Team to the region to make an assement of the situation of how they can help with the clean up of oiled birds.
IFAW are extremely professional when it comes to how to help oil soaked birds. They have very experienced staff. ( So now IFAW that IceClass compared to Hitler can really help some wildlife).
Libby I will keep you updated….
“The fact that dolphins and birds listed in Russia’s Red Book (of endangered species) are dying is very sad indeed .”
Russian enviro group Mitvol stated :
“Mitvol said environmental experts from Belgium, Brazil and the United States would arrive in the area in the next few days.”
( Note this must be Sea Alarm from Belgium and IBRRC and IFAW from the US and Brazil)
What a beat up. It was only a total of 2000 tonnes, compared to 37,000 tonnes from the Exon Valdez. And the wildlife has all returned to the Exon site. Check the ranking of past spills on the above links.
Now lets see, 2000m3 of oil at 1mm thickness will spread to 2,000,000 square metres, or 200 hectares of a waterway that is more than 600km2.
That is, 200ha/60000ha or 0.33 of 1% of the Kerch Strait. In fact, the Tuzla spit is at least 8km long and in the order of 1.5km wide so there are initial grounds for doubting if the impact will even cover all of the spit.
Soon some purple science journo will start quoting the spill in litres, not tonnes, to make it seem even more alarming.
A mishap? Yes. A tragedy? For the birds, yes. A Chernobyl scale disaster? Give us a break.
Ian,
Yes , I knew that some people would compare this disaster to the Exxon Valdez disaster , comparing tonnes, but you must also think about that the Black Sea is an inland sea , which makes the disaster far worse.
In 2006 , only 40 tons heavy fuel oil caused a BIG disaster among wildlife in the Finnish Gulf killing over 30 000 seabirds, so it’s not fair to compare tons.
I was also wrong about the number of ships that sunk, they were actually 11 , so there will be much more tons of toxic oil leaking than the 2100 that is now reported.
The very sad thingy is of course that the accident happened in the middle of a wildlife preserve, in the middle of migratory birds wintering grounds.
Yeah, I agree that comparing this to Chernobyl is over the top since methinks there are lots of similar accidents in Russia that goes unreported for the international media, especially up in the oil fields in Siberia , with leaking pipelines etc….
Hey Ian,
You have made a major error in your calculations, you have forgotten to take into account water temperature and oil viscosity….
Fine, Ann, a small error relating to the density of 1mm of oil. But the rest of the media have made a much bigger one that I did not pick up at the time of the above post.
While the total volume of oil may have been circa 2000 tonnes, the tanker that broke up near the Tuzla Spit only had 800 tonnes. The rest of the total was in wrecks of small ships all over the region, and well away from Tuzla.
So we will need to do the numbers again, in the interests of truth, rather than rubbing noses in it, of course. Now 800 m3 of oil is 800,000m3 at 1mm thick. That is 80 hectares which, at very worst case, would cover a thin, 100m wide strip for one side of the Tuzla Spit. That is, assuming the entire volume was deposited there, which is unlikely given the intensity of the storms.
And as for the impact of 40 tonnes in the gulf of Finland, it is approximately 20,000km2 or 2,000,000 hectares. So you, and all the other victims of media over-reporting, may well think the 40 tonnes had a major impact on the entire Gulf, but the volumes involved make it a physical improbability.
Has there been a detailed, verifiable study of the Gulf to determine the impact of this particular event, as distinct from the more likely bilge venting by Soviet era shipping?
Ian, here’a a link from the Gulf of Finland oil spill response. This was an extremely difficult action to save birds as there were icy conditions and Arctic temperaures. It is stated in the link that the spill was ” only” 20 tons, but as I took a little part in the action as well I know the spill was about 40 tons.
Re oiled birds in the Gulf it was estimated that about 35 000 sea birds perished , mainly long tailed ducks. It is as well estimated that only 10% of the birds wash ashore so numbers are usually much bigger than just the birds you find on the beaches.
In colder temperatures the oil will finally sink to the bottom as well causing damage/ poisoning the sea bottom and its eco system and the whole food chain from plankton , fish to sea birds and marine mammals.
http://www.ibrrc.org/estonia-06.html
Ian
you are mixing up your exponents. 800m3 I assume is 800 cubic metres.
At 1mm thick as the constant we end up with 800,000 m2 (metres squared), assuming you did your arithmetic. Strange boy blunder hasn’t picked up on it but then his undestanding of the scientific method is 0m4.
Otherwise I am in agreement with your perspective.
Missing from this thread is the fact that hydrocarbons are a natural emission from the earth’s mantle.
Oil is not pollution but deemed so by the scientically ignorant.
No one has experimentally shown how oil can be produced from compressing vegetation and biomass to the temperatures and pressures at the bottom of the known sedimentary basins.
Science has, however, experimentally shown, now twice, that it can be produced at upper mantle temperatures and pressures from iron, carbonate and water.
Conclusion?
OIL AIN”T POLLUTION, SOL.
” Has there been a detailed, verifiable study of the Gulf to determine the impact of this particular event, as distinct from the more likely bilge venting by Soviet era shipping?” – Ian
A good question . I know studies have been carried out in the Finnish Gulf but right now I don’t know the results and the real impact on the eco system.
The Balic Sea and the Black Sea are the worlds most polluted seas , much due to oil shipping and bilge water etc.
It was estimated( yesterday) that about 500 000 sea birds die annually in the Baltic Sea due to bilge water etc.
The Baltic Sea is traffickated by big Russian oil tankers ( 100 000 tons oil tankers). No one dares to think about the consequences of an oil tanker catastrophe.It’s a major transit for oil to Europe and Asia.
” OIL AIN”T POLLUTION, SOL.” – Louis
Even if oil is also released into the environment ( like mercury) from natural geologic seeps on the sea floor , it is still toxic, mutagenic and carcenogenic!
And please Louis, tell the oil soaked birds it ain’t pollution!!!:(
http://www.planetark.com/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/45380
“The spill has covered a relatively small distance of coastline of about 18 km long, (the southern shore of the Gulf is more than 450km) including the nearby islands, but the area is heavily utilized as a foraging area for seabirds this time of year. Rescue teams combing beaches saw approximately 50 swans that are oiled and in need of rescue.”
Sorry Ann, that is a problem but it is hardly what you called a “BIG disaster”. Other links indicate dead birds in the hundreds with up to 5000 “threatened”. The link to the 35,000 birds does not work but, again, they refer to being threatened, not killed.
40 tonnes is circa 40m3 or 40000m2 or 4 hectares in area. Spread that over 18km and we get a strip that is only 2.2 metres wide. If it was only 20 tonnes then it would only have been 1.1 metre wide.
Looked at another way, 35,000 ducks would soak up about 200ml of oil each which would account for about 7 tonnes of oil. Possible but improbable.
And thanks Louis, I did mean 800,000m2, not m3.
It should also be noted that the oil in the planet ark link appears to be quite a bit thicker than 1mm which would mean the area covered would be much less.
” Rescue teams combing beaches saw approximately 50 swans that are oiled and in need of rescue.”- Ian
As I was part of the team that coordinated the oil spill response I can tell you
-the birds in question were mostly pelagic long tailed ducks and only 10 % of them wash ashore. Thousands of them were found on the beaches before the international team arrived. Actually most birds were already dead when the team arrived. It was simply too cold for them to survive with oil soaked feathers. That’s why they only saw and saved mostly mute swans…
Actually Ian , it was an extremely sad situation. During one day thousands of deep sea ducks were washed ashore on the beaches and there was still a possibility to save them but during the night it was a cold snap and it was snowing , and in the morning the birds that were unable to fly and move were covered by snow and perished from hypothermia. It was a bird churchyard and small mountains of dead birds…. extremely sad…..
That would be very sad to deal with Ann. Regardless of whether it is “pollution”, a ” BIG disaster” or the precise stats of the spill area and viscosity, as you have seen, it is a dreadful thing to happen, with the results pretty obvious. It is expensive and laborious dealing with such events, and the long and short-term effects can impact on humans via fisheries and tourism.
There is as well another danger with oils pills, not only the very graphic and visual image of oil soaked birds , destroyed spawning areas for fish, dead fish and dolphins .
Dying and dead oiled birds are very attractive and easy prey for predatory birds and other predators as foxes. They eat the oiled birds, and get poisoned and die. So it is crucial as well to collect the dead birds as soon as possible and burn them.
I don’t doubt the emotional impact it had on you and everyone else involved, Ann. My only concern is the way the scale of the emotional impact is translated in the media into a physical scale that does not fit the circumstances.
This is not meant as a personal criticism, we all do it on issues we regard as important.
Thanks Libby and Ian for your kind replies. And Ian you’re right that some media reports are exaggerated . Often ” chronic oil pollution” is much worse and kills more sea birds than a single tanker accident. But of course for the media the big accidents are much more interesting.
A very interesting and scary excerpt from BirdLife International:
“For decades, oil pollution has killed annually between 100,000 and 500,000 waterbirds in the Baltic Sea. Most of the spills are relatively small, but as they occur in all parts of the sea, they are even more disastrous for birds than single tanker accidents.
A small amount of oil is often all it takes for feathers to lose their ‘waterproofing’ capacity, and as a result waterbirds drown or then succumb to what are often freezing conditions. Additionally birds also ingest oil while trying to clean their feathers and are then poisoned”.
http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2007/11/baltic_sea_action_plan.html
That seems like a big number but what is the total population of water birds in the Baltic Sea? And what is their life spans, annual birth rates and mortality?
Hi Ian,
One of the most abundant species in the Baltic Sea are the nice and cute long tailed ducks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-tailed_Duck
Population numbers : about 4,5 million ducks
Wintering ground : Baltic Sea
I have not the stats but methinks an average life span of an ordinary sea bird is about 20 years
The long tailed ducks have this uncomfortable habit to land in oil spill areas in the seas as it’s not a myth that the waters are calmer when they are oily.
Personally I have not heard about 500 000 birds perished annually but about 100 000 long tailed ducks die annually in oil spills.( But note it’s very difficult to count the numbers on the high seas)
An international rescue team has now arrived to the Russian side of the border to help wildlife.
From a Russian site ( Babelfish translation):
” On the arrival immediately they left to call on the birds, which washed clean from the petroleum residue 3 days ago the volunteers from the society of hunters and fishermen, whom first instructed our colleagues. To them no one was occupied by the rescuing of the birds of Ryy; basic forces are to cleaning of coast.
Of 150 birds, which they washed clean and planted into the cells to dry and to come into themselves, only 25 perished on the first night, 34 weakest still they remain in the cells, and rest already they had time to let out in the safe place of Ryy; they completely arrived into themselves!
From the remained birds half is also ready to release, and half must be still held in the cells.
“taking into account that cleaned these birds volunteers of Ryy; not specialists -ornitogi, I count they they accomplished remarkable work”- said Valentina kozlitins the chief veterinary surgeon from the Moscow zoo.
An oiled Grebe in the Black Sea area :
http://www.ibrrc.org/russia07_spill_response.html